Top Picks
Invasion – Invasion 2 (hard/melodic rock, hair metal)
I had this whole other wirte-up about how Kingcrow's Hopium is "the best Leprous album since Coal (2013)", or whatever, but I wasn't really happy with it. There's only so many times you can compliment a band for sounding more or less exactly like another, and it was turning into a diatribe about how much I haven't liked the last few Leprous albums (which I was also starting to suspect I was underestimating anyway), rather than how good Hopium itself is. There are times when these things just get away from you and you have to let them go. ...And besides, this is a hair metal emergency!
Invasion first excited me when I recognised the Tidus-lookalike fronting the band as the same guy who was responsible for belting out the chorus to "I'm Somebody" by the more prog-inclined melodic rock band Big City, which has been stuck in my head ever since I heard it. Turns out the dude's name is Jørgen Bergersen, and he can really wail! The guitarist with the killer facial hair is Adrian Sunde Bjerketvedt can also absolutely shred, which makes sense, since he's the current guitarist for Norwegian melodic metal powerhouse Jorn Lande. Add in some early H.E.A.T-style synth work and some big, fat, heavy metal riffage, reminiscent of modern Wig Wam, and and you know you're in for a good time.
The moment I became fully invested though was "Hungry for Love", which—like much of the album—is built around a formidable, Whitesnake-style strut. More importantly though is that Bergersen introduces its first verse by screaming "I feel sexy!" before rambling on about being a "monkey on fire" in this "jungle of desire" (mo-m-m-m-mo-mo-mo-monkey!) and bringing back the second verse with a cry of "I still feel sexy!" and the whole thing gives way to a bitchin' guitar solo—because subtext is for what? Cowards! Kingcrow and Leprous wish they rocked this hard.
Kingcrow – Hopium (progressive metal)
This is the best Leprous album since Coal (2013).
Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All (brutal/tech-death)
While I'm making bold proclamations: The Underwold Awaits Us All is the best Nile album in at least/almost a decade. That's not really saying much though, since there's only been one other album since previous benchmark, What Should Not Be Unearthed (2015). I guess what I’m saying then is: The new Nile album is way better than the last Nile album!
The Underwold Awaits Us All is a much needed and extremely successful correction to the chaotic mess that was 2019's Vile Nilotic Rites. While that record squirmed around like a fornicating serpent, never allowing the listener to really get a hold on it amid all its chaotic frenzy, The Underwold Awaits Us All slows things down, injecting some much needed groove and variation back into its song structures, while still retaining the band's trademark level of technically-tinged, Phrygian brutality. The album it reminds me most, therefore, is not a Nile album at all, but rather Origin's Chaosmos (2022), which provided a similar intervention into that band's discography that goes to show how slowing things down sometimes can often produce more murderous results.
In an odd 2024 trend, The Underworld Awaits Us All is another album whose final track should have probably been its first. Actual opener "Stelae of Vultures" just sort of starts out of nowhere and sounds like something should have proceeded it, and if ominous, building instrumental "Lament for the Destruction of Time" isn't going to be introducing proceedings, then there's no real reason for it to be tacked onto the end of the album either, especially when the epic title track provides such a fitting and definitive closer. Still, that's the only real criticism I can level at The Underworld Awaits Us All which otherwise breathes new life into one of extreme music's best-ever bands, and it and will come as an even more welcome surprise to those among their fanbase with less affection for What Should Not be Unearthed and At the Gates of Sethu (2012).
Release Roundup
All for Metal – Gods of Metal (power metal)
Alleviate – DMNS (modern metalcore)
The Archaic Epidemic – Infinite Exile (deathcore)
Ar’lyxkq’wr – Vwn’yv´rl (weird/noisy death metal)
Bite The Bullet – Looking for Paradise (hardish rock)
Black Raptus – Like a Sharp Blade (black metal, meloblack)
Bred For Slaughter – Kill For Satan (shitty black/death metal)
Brian Gibson – Thrasher (electronic ambient, soundtrack)
Brojob – Deathcore is Dead (brutal deathcore, slam)
Buryfication – Gallows Rise (death metal/thrash)
Carmeria – Tragedie D’amour (goth rock/metal)
Ceuthonymus – Winter’s Frozen Vein (black metal)
Chained Saint – Blindside (thrash)
Cypher – Cypher (shitty prog metal)
DAMPF – No Angels Alive (industrial goth-metal)
Dawn Treader – Bloom & Decay (post-black metal/gaze)
Dead Karma – The Space Camaro (stoner rock/metal)
Deadscape – State Of Decline (melodeath)
Delving – All Paths Diverge (progressive post-rock, post-prog?)
Demiser – Slave To The Scythe (black metal/thrash)
Difuntor – Edifying the Pain’s Candles in Death Congregation (death metal)
Dr. K & the Gore Cession – Dig Out the Dead (death metal)
Drenched – Grey (nu/butt rock)
Earth Lux – Earth Lux (heavy metal)
EchoVerse – Whispers Between Worlds (prog rock)
Endless Chain – Agony (mellowdoom)
Exorency – Mortal Vision (grindy/blackened death metal)
Eyes Of The Oak – Neolithic Flint Dagger (proggy stoner-doom)
Ezkaton – Synaestesis Monologue (dsbm, doom)
Faceless Empress – The Escapist (stoner metal/doom)
Fallen Gabriel – The Benevolence Of Death – Remake (black metal)
Fleshgod Apocalypse – Opera (symphonic death/opera metal)
Föhn – Condescending (funeral doom)
Fostermother – Echo Manor (psychedelic/stoner prog)
Furnace – Trojan Hearse (melodeath)
Generation Of Vipers – Guilt Shrine (alt/death-sludge)
The Georgia Thunderbolts – Rise Above It All (hard/southern rock)
Gravenoire – Devant La Porte Des Etoiles (black metal)
Har – Cursed Creation (weird/brutal death metal)
Hatchend – Summer Of ’69 (crust)
Hellwrath – Sin Eater (deathcore)
Helvetestromb/Santet – For All That Is Truly Evil (meloblack, crusty blackthrash)
Hozier – Unreal Unearth: Unaired (indie/pop-rock)
I Hear Sirens – Acheron (post rock)
Jager Henry – Heart Of Thorns (post hardcore, emo)
Jeris Johnson – Dragonborn ("The Future of Rock")
Koldbrann – Ingen Skansel (black metal)
Mammoth Volume – Raised Up By Witches (stonery prog rock)
Meer – Wheels Within Wheels (prog rock)
Melt-Banana – 3+5 (noisey electro rock)
Miss May I – Apologies Are For The Weak (Re-Recorded) (who asked for this?)
Monolith – Lord of the Insect Order (proggish deathcore)
Morgue Terror – Violent And Murderous Thoughts (shitty death metal)
Motorpsycho – Neigh!! (psychish rock)
My Fictions – Touch Of Glass (post hardcore)
Nebülith – Feel Good Music For The End Of The World Vol. 1 (stoner doom)
Nino Helfrich – Shadow Empress (melodic prog metal)
The Oklahoma Kid – Featherminded (industrialish groove-metal/core)
Orbital Gate – Nebulous Wavering Illumination (brutal death metal)
Orme – No Serpents, No Saviours (psychedelic doom-drone)
Paralydium – Universe Calls (melodic/prog metal)
Rising Insane – Wildfires (modern metal/core, alt rock)
Sapientia Diaboli – I ov the Darkness (dissoblack)
Scrunchies – Colossal (alt punk)
Sidewinder – Talons (doomy stoner metal)
Siege Perilous – Creation’s Call (power/folk metal)
Silvera – World Behind Doors (hard rock, alt metal)
Simone Simons – Vermillion (electrofied symphonic/opera metal)
Spectral Wound – Songs Of Blood And Mire (black metal)
Surtalog – Ragnarök – Schicksal der Götter, Tod der Menschen und Ende der Welten (meloblack/death)
Uniform – American Standard (noisy industrial)
Vergeblichkeit – Was hängt der späten Jugend an? (blackened goth-metal)
Vibravoid – We Cannot Awake (psychedelic rock)
Vomitrot – Emetic Imprecations (noisy death-metal/grind)
Warlord – From The Ashes To The Archives: The Hot Pursuit Continues (heavy metal)
Within The Ruins – Phenomena II (tech-metalcore)
Wounded Touch/FalllFiftyFeet – Traumatic Entanglement (hardcore, mathcore)
Yagrum Bagarn – In The Corprusarium (weird/proggy/blackish death metal)